Harper Charter School

Harper Charter School is a small, rural K-12 alternative charter school in Harper, Oregon, serving 258 students across all 13 grades in Harper School District 66 — a one-school district with no other schools within 20 miles, so all comparisons below are against Oregon statewide averages rather than nearby schools.

Reading is the school's clearest strength. In 2025-26 English language arts, Harper students scored 59.0% proficient across all grades versus 43.8% statewide, and every grade with a reported score was at or above the state average — 6th grade at 70% vs 41.8%, 11th grade at 71.4% vs 46%, and 4th grade at 46.2% vs 43.5%. (3rd and 5th grade ELA results are suppressed by the state for privacy.) Math is more mixed: the all-grades figure of 38.6% beats the state's 32.9%, powered by an exceptional 4th grade (69.2% vs 38.9%) and roughly average results in grades 6–8, but 11th grade math is 14.3% against 22.9% statewide. Science is the weakest subject overall (18.4% vs 30.6%), though that low number combines an above-state 8th grade (33.3% vs 27.7%) with an 11th grade result under 5% against a state rate of 33.8%.

Two completion indicators have moved in the wrong direction. The graduation rate has fallen from 96.3% in 2021-22 to 71.8% in 2024-25 — a 24.5-point drop that now trails the state's 83.0%. Chronic absenteeism roughly quadrupled over the same period, from 8.5% in 2020-21 to 34.5% in 2024-25, the first year Harper has been worse than the state average. Because class sizes are very small, single-year figures should be read as signals to investigate rather than stable measurements. Per-student spending has also swung widely, from $16,621 to $25,142 over four years, while student-teacher ratios held steady at about 19-20.